Kate Mulley

Now that I am employed and Sezze Sun has ended I have time to go to the theater again. This afternoon I went to a sold-out matinee performance of Ruined, the Pulitzer-winning play by Lynn Nottage. I had obviously heard good things about it and knew that it’s closing next week and I had recently received an email offering me $30 tickets because I’m under 30 (yay!). It’s set in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and centers around a bar/brothel, the women who work there, the men who frequent it. I thought it was great. Very compelling  and well-acted, moments of humor and also of true terror. I kept thinking about all the horrible things that could happen to the characters and then hoped that they wouldn’t happen (which indicates a certain amount of compassion for the characters). I also loved that the lead character Mama Nadi was a cynical madam (or ‘madamoiselle’ as she corrects one of the characters) constantly pushing away the affections of her admirer. Her headstrong, no-nonsense approach to business was equal parts savvy and emotionally cool. But when moments of tenderness shine through they are even more powerful.My only issues were that the accents often seemed a little muddled (I noticed in the program that the dialect coach’s credits seem to focus more on plays set in the South, as opposed to the Congo) and because of so much double and triple casting among the male actors, I was occasionally confused by which side of the fighting the men were on.

I haven’t heard anything about a London production, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s at the National or the Royal Court within the year (or possibly the Young Vic). I think it would transfer well and winning the Pulitzer probably doesn’t hurt.

Sunday’s New York Times had a very good article about West End shows coming to Broadway. When I lived in London, I loved the fact that I could see plays before they made their way to New York. Out of the transfers coming this season (La Cage aux Folles, A Little Night Music, Hamlet), I’ve seen two and have booked for the third thanks to some cheap Amex pre-sale tickets. There was also something nice about being able to have a conversation about a play that friends had seen in New York when I had seen the original production in London.

Occasionally this goes the other way, especially at the Royal Court, where plays like The Pain and the Itch and Wig Out! opened after productions at new writing theatres in New York. I liked being able to see good productions of American plays when I was there, even if the accents were occasionally spotty (though not as spotty as British accents in New York!), especially if I had read favorable reviews of them.

In two weeks I’m heading back to London for a week of theatre-going and catching up with friends. I’ve been trying to determine which plays to see, but unfortunately I’m missng ENRON and the Barbican will be dark. So am leaning towards some good old Shakespeare at the Globe, something at the National (Pitmen Painters or Lolita) and possibly getting some half-price tickets for a good West End romp. Sister Act? Hello Dolly? Maybe I’ll indulge myself in some Jersey Boys, though that seems a little weird.

I spent a couple days in New Hampshire with my parents after the end of Sezze Sun and they suggested that we go see a show at the local summer stock theatre, The Barnstormers Theatre. It’s about five miles from the cabin that my great-grandfather built near Silver Lake in Tamworth, NH and boasts an 8 week season with 8 different plays, all apparently performed by AEA members. We saw a production of I Love You Because, a musical loosely based on Pride and Prejudice about dating in New York (which occasionally rang too true for comfort). It was a fun night out– better than listening to the Yankees pummel the Red Sox on the radio–and nice to see theater more or less thriving outside the city. I wasn’t a huge fan of the musical itself, but the overall experience was good. Looking at the 2009 season, they have a pretty wide range of material, including NHB favorite The Weir by Conor McPherson (who is a very lovely man in the flesh), a play that is probably pretty cool when performed in rural New Hampshire. My mother is now on the mailing list, so I’m sure I’ll be back next summer to see what they have in store.

Last week I was asked to write a piece for Upstart Theatre in London. I have had two such requests from across the pond in the past few weeks and it’s nice to think that I can still maintain my theatrical network over there. Thank god for the internet! This most recent one is a response to “When was the last time you were told you were beautiful?” I had been thinking about it for a few days because I couldn’t remember . I was told it was ok to write something fictional, but hadn’t gotten around to it until today (my first day off in awhile). Of course, this being New York, in the past week I’ve been told I was beautiful by men on the street twice. Maybe they knew I had this monologue to write!

There was something bleak about wracking my brain trying to remember the last time someone told me I was beautiful. Especially when it’s the word specifically that you’re trying to remember. I’ve always been a confessional writer, but I tend to draw my writing from scenarios rather than specific words. Occasionally I will borrow an exact phrase that I’ve heard from someone or overheard in passing, but to sit down and remember the last time I was told I was beautiful was an exercise in memory and also in memory fabrication. If I couldn’t remember a specific example, could I try to insert something into a scenario to make it a dramatic and viable? In this case I didn’t have to do that, but in my more fictionalized work, I do that all the time. Fleshing out the potential in situations to create more engaging scenes. Something that’s always a good thing when I’m writing, but has it’s pluses and minuses in real life.

Tonight is officially opening night of the New York run of Sezze Sun. We had a very good preview last night. Since we left DC we’ve made some additions to the script, added new and exciting technical elements and had a generally busy time. With a small production crew, everyone does what’s needed, regardless of title. so I’ve been dusting off old skills (hanging lights, painting, front of house managing). I love how tangible the results are during tech. You take a play from a rehearsal room to the theatre and then all of a sudden there are lights and sound cues and real chairs and fake floors and it looks real. Or if not real, it looks theatrically real. It’s been so long since I’ve experienced the development of a full production like this (and the first time it’s been a full production of a play I’ve written), so it’s still a little shocking. And some of the new things that we’ve added are pretty remarkable (I can say that because I’ve had very little to do with them). There are some hilarious sound cues (at least, I think they’re hilarious). And the floor (if I may say so), looks pretty cool.